Why Aren't More Print Publishers Cozying Up With The iPad?

The iPad was announced on January 27, 2010 and was quickly heralded by many in traditional print media as a potential rejuvenator for their troubled businesses. Having used the device daily for the last six weeks or so, I must admit it is the perfect media consumption device, among many other things, for all of my reading (books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, tweets, FB feed, emails, web sites). Given my propensity to multitask, I crave multi-purpose devices and find the Kindle far too limiting a product, especially for the price. The iPad is perfect for email, calendaring, surfing, reading books, digesting RSS feeds, browsing real-time web feeds from Twitter and Facebook, watching movies while traveling, listening to music, checking weather, tuning in to baseball games, and countless other things. It is a far better way to consume magazines and newspapers than any other electronic device I have seen.
Given this, more than five months after it has been announced and the developer tools made available, and more than sixty days after shipping, why is Wired one of the few print publishers to make the leap and offer a version? The WSJ has a decent app (but downloads take forever), the NY Times has an anemic reader which showcases only a handful of stories each day (many duplicated in each section), the NY Post released an app which just offers pictures, and Vanity Fair offers a meager PDF of the print magazine for a whopping $5 per issue. USA Today seemed to step up with a nicely designed app. But it’s telling that so few of the traditional print publishers have taken the last five months to rethink the way a magazine or newspaper ought to be delivered digitally and devote sufficient resources to getting something great out on time. Wired’s editor Chris Andersen made some noise about how his staff did this, but frankly their implementation is also mostly a glorified PDF with some videos thrown in. Amazingly, URLs are not hot-linked in Wired nor Vanity Fair, email addresses are not clickable, text is not selectable nor are articles tweetable.
I think the iPad is actually under-hyped as a device that will transform media consumption. I think, thanks to the forthcoming wave of tablet devices and better netbooks, the consumer PC is basically dead within the next three years (not so for PCs for the enterprise). But with this new opportunity comes the need for content companies to be aggressive in adapting to and adopting new platforms. We have seen countless examples of how native (i.e., purpose-built) applications prosper on new platforms whereas those migrated from a legacy platform never quite work. Doodlejump is the best selling game on iPhone, not Halo. Farmville is the biggest game on Facebook, not Mario Bros. Early adopters of new platforms tend to reap the rewards more quickly than the late entrants. Given the rapid pace of technology adoption (Steve Jobs says iPad is the best selling product Apple has ever released), consumers build loyalty to new brands more easily when they are the only ones available on a new platform. I advise our companies to be aggressive in adopting new platforms. Crunchyroll, a leader in the anime video space online, had a great iPad app available days after the device shipped. It is this level of aggressiveness that the traditional media companies must adopt in order to build consumer mindshare on these platforms.
It is easy to say, “Only 3MM iPads have been sold.” But given there are only 13,000 apps for iPad written so far, there is plenty of room for best-in-class apps to reach audiences much larger than their analog print equivalents. NPR, for example, has a great app that has been downloaded more than 350,000 times (as of mid-June).
Conde Nast had to go the embarrassing route of announcing their intention to deliver iPad versions of their magazines back in March but have only a few examples above to show for it, shortcomings and all. Where is The New Yorker? Cosmo? Glamour? Oprah? Better Homes and Gardens? Architectural Digest? People? The Economist? New York Magazine? National Geographic? Can you imagine what type of experience could be built for the iPad and other tablets with the content of these magazines? Yet none are available. Where are the hip magazines? Paper? Paste? Even Rolling Stone, heralding a rebirth of late, is absent.
Here are the top magazines by circulation (as of end of 2009 by AdAge) and who has at least shipped an iPad app (√). Looks like a whopping six out the top 20:

1. AARP The Magazine
2. Better Homes & Gardens
3. Reader’s Digest √
4. Good Housekeeping
5. National Geographic
6. Woman’s Day √
7. Ladies Home Journal
8. Family Circle
9. Game Informer Magazine
10. People
11. Time √
12. Taste of Home
13. Sports Illustrated √
14. Cosmopolitan
15. Prevention √
16. Southern Living
17. AAA Via
18. Maxim √
19. O, the Oprah Magazine
20. AAA Living

This resistance to adopt early and experiment by incumbents is precisely what provides the opportunities for startups to create value quickly and disrupt markets.

Source: Business Insider

Report: Rivals can exploit Kindle shortcomings

Companies are likely to challenge the Amazon Kindle by unveiling cheaper, more versatile e-readers, moving beyond books, and striking better deals with publishers, according to a report released Monday by Forrester Research.
"Amazon.com, leveraging its position as a dominant book retailer, has catalyzed the market for eBooks, but that's just the beginning of the eReader revolution," writes Forrester media and technology analyst Sarah Rotman Epps in the report. "Competitors will attack Amazon's market position by launching new features, expanding content beyond books, dominating markets outside the U.S., reducing costs, and improving relationships with publishers."
The eReader market has been hot, notes the report, thanks to consumers who are hungry for portable and convenient media devices. Around 14.9 million U.S. households regularly buy books online. Among that group, 48 percent earn more than $70,000 a year and spend $28 a month on books, half of them online.
Though Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader have carved out the biggest chunk of the market--Forrester estimates sales for the two units hit the million-dollar mark for 2008--other companies have entered the fray. Fujitsu has released a color e-reader in Japan, while Samsung plans to unveil a touchscreen e-reader in South Korea this year. In Europe, Irex Technologies makes a versatile line of e-readers with touchscreens and Wi-Fi.
The Kindle's limitations also pave the way for newcomers, says Forrester. The Kindle is geared toward reading books, but other content can work on an e-reader, including textbooks, newspapers, magazines, comics, and even blogs. Much of that will fuel the need for larger screens, color displays, and the ability to highlight text and write notes. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has warned not to expect a color Kindle for many years.
Besides color and bigger screens, the competition will try to distinguish itself from the Kindle by offering touchscreens, animation, and eventually video. Forrester expects color displays to be available by the end of 2010, with video following in 2011 or 2012. The Kindle's lack of social networking also is a weakness, says the report, since people who buy books often like to discuss them with others and offer their reviews and recommendations.
Drivers of Growth for eReader Devices and Content

There are other areas where the Kindle faces competition, notes Forrester. Amazon's price tags--$359 for the Kindle 2 and $489 for the Kindle DX--are beyond the budgets of many consumers. Even Sony's e-readers start at $299. With a decent Netbook selling for $300, the report says, e-reader prices will need to come down.
The Kindle is a sales hit in U.S. but lags throughout the rest of the world. Sony and other companies, such as Fujitsu and Irex Technologies, are better positioned to gain from higher worldwide demand for e-readers.
Publishers also have a love/hate relationship with Amazon, says Forrester. They love the Kindle as another profitable way to package their content. But they don't like the way Amazon hoards 70 percent of the profits, leaving publishers with only a 30 percent cut. The report expects other e-reader vendors to slice out better deals with publishers.
Overall, the next five years should see even stronger demand for electronic reading devices, says Forrester, with a large portion of that driven by students once textbooks are more prevalent on the portable format. Global demand, which now adds up to one-third of all e-reader sales, is likely to surge as well.
Research company In-Stat also predicts a soaring e-reader market ahead. As more e-readers are produced, their raw manufacturing costs will drop by 23 percent between 2009 and 2013, according to a new In-Stat report. Technology also will improve, the research firm says: today's e-readers use display technology from E Ink, but the future may see OLED screens to deliver higher-quality readers.

Source: news.cnet.com